Most state inmates resettle in Chicago

Study says many end up in 6 areas

April 17, 2003|By Sean D. Hamill, Tribune staff reporter.

Slightly more than half of all inmates released from Illinois prisons in 2001 resettled in Chicago, with nearly one-third of those who headed to the city ending up in just six neighborhoods, according to a new Urban Institute study.

The Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center recorded where all of 30,068 of the released inmates settled and are continuing to track a sample group. The study, released Wednesday, is the first of its scope in Illinois, said institute researcher Nancy La Vigne.

Three West Side neighborhoods--Austin, Humboldt Park and East Garfield Park--and three on the South Side--Englewood, West Englewood and North Lawndale--received 4,398 of the former inmates. In Far West Side Austin alone, 1,681 former inmates settled.

The study is ongoing, and the results of how the ex-inmates have fared after release will be completed next year. But the initial results showing so many of them settling in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods "have obvious policy implications," La Vigne said.

"These people are coming from prison and going to these communities, and this is where the [transitional] services should be," she said. "It's happening, there are services there, but not to the extent it should be."

Sergio Molina, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, said the department recognizes that some neighborhoods are home to a disproportionate number of former inmates and it tries to focus its post-prison services in them.

"But there will probably never be enough in some people's minds," he said.

The study found services available to former inmates varied widely, but it noted that Englewood and West Englewood had no social service agencies to help ex-convicts who settle there.

Molina said every inmate goes through a prerelease program to help them adjust to life outside of prison. Gov. Rod Blagojevich has proposed doubling the number of parole agents to provide closer supervision for ex-inmates, he said.

But some of the more successful transitional programs--in which inmates stay in work-release housing before being formally released--have limited openings, he said.

"The burden on us has been to find the appropriate place for inmates to go," Molina said.

Illinois and Chicago are among four city-state pairs being studied by the Urban Institute but the first to have their initial report made public. The other pairs are Houston and Texas; Cleveland and Ohio; and Baltimore and Maryland.

The locations were chosen in part because of funding--one of the big financial supporters of the study, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is based in Chicago--but also because of their differences.

In Cleveland and Ohio, for example, 40 percent of inmates are released with no supervision outside of prison, but just 15 percent of Illinois inmates are released without supervision. The researchers want to examine the impact supervision has on former inmates, La Vigne said.

The study also found that 52 percent of inmates released in 2001 had been in an Illinois prison at least once before, 27 percent returned to prison because of a technical parole violation and 42 percent were serving time for drug offenses.

Ninety percent of inmates released in 2001 were men, 67 percent were African-American and 46 percent had children.

The results also showed that Illinois, like the rest of the country, has seen a dramatic increase in its prison population during the last three decades, jumping to 44,348 inmates in 2001 from 7,326 in 1970.

"We shouldn't be surprised by these numbers," La Vigne said. "What we're seeing is the result of incarceration policies that we've had for a couple of decades now, with a focus on drug offenders that has resulted in a buildup in our prisons. And what goes in must come out."